Prima dello scriptorium. Esperienze di produzione libraria ‘collettiva’ in età tardoantica

The goal of this research is to reconstruct the process of formation of the scriptorium analyzing the late antiquity manuscripts written by many hands. The contexts studied are of two types: one consists of the smaller Christian communities, often in remote areas, in which manuscripts are products of medium and low quality formal; the other consists of the commercial libraries, whose experience is inherited from some important Christian institutions. In the first context spreads a communitarian conception of book production; in the second born a physical and graphical 'normalization' of the codex that takes full advantage of an organized work.